Wanna See My Gun?

This past summer I had an internship in Washington D.C. working in the political realm. I had never dated a guy from the South, until one evening at a bar on 14th Street, I met a guy- lets call him Jack (the opposite of his unusual name)- from South Carolina. We hit it off and headed back to Jack’s apartment for an all night makeout session. When he drove me home the next morning, I must have missed the confederate flag on the front license plate of his PICK UP. Yes, a pick-up truck in D.C., how utilitarian and typical of a Southern dude. I must have also missed the fact that he remarked, “I’ve never dated a Yankee before” when he dropped me off. But, I was in D.C. for just the summer, he was cute and we had a good time. So we planned to go out the next week…

A few weeks and few dates later with Jack, I was curious why he hadn’t friended me on Facebook or why I couldn’t find him in the predominant world of social networking. With my best friend and best sleuth I know, lets call her Sue, we started researching him on Google. As she stumbled upon something interesting, Sue handed me the computer with a confused look on her face. “Wait… is this him?…And why is he burning down a forest?” As I looked at the picture, I saw that is was him. And he WAS in fact burning brush or some type of tree setting. I guess that’s what they do in the South? Straaange… why would you make that your profile picture? Also, for someone worried enough about people finding him on Facebook, his pictures had no privacy settings and they were open to the world to see. Makes complete sense… NOT!

The next weekend, Jack told me that he couldn’t hang out because he was going “hunting”, but wanted to hang out Sunday when he returned. I could just imagine him out in in his camoflauge, yellow specs, gun in hand hiding in some tree somewhere. When I showed up at his apartment/house on Sunday early evening, his roommate answered the door and said “yeah, Jack’s upstairs, cleaning his gun.” After my hearty, head-back chuckle, I said “oh yeah, sure…” thinking he was totally joking. We weren’t in the boonies… we were in the heart of the District of Columbia, near Capitol Hill! As I walked through the doorway, there was Jack, firearm solvent and lubrication oil in one hand, gun in the other. I walked in stunned and taken aback (I am not the biggest fan of guns in general). While he went about his business, barely saying a word to me, I sat on his bed and began to ask questions about everything BUT the elephant in the room. It was one of the most awkward situations I have encountered.

I learned from a Southern friend later that week that Southern girls would typically play dumb, stroke the ego of the guy and ask such questions as- “tell me about what you’re doing” or “can I go with you sometime? I’d love to learn to shoot.”

As you can imagine, Jack and I did not last very much longer. I’m waaaay too New York City to be interested in guns or pretend to be interested.